Loving scorn and compassionate sarcasm from the creator of Belacqua Jones.

Sunday, January 20, 2008

Teaching Manners to America's College Students

Dear George,

Control America’s colleges and universities and you control America. For too long the American campus has been a hotbed of violent radicalization and homegrown terrorism. We would have prevailed in Vietnam, had it not been for long-haired hippy peaceniks spewing their antiwar vomit all over the Pentagon parking lot. The Beltway learned a valuable lesson from that experience: if you are going to launch an illegal war make sure you lockdown the colleges and universities.

And thanks to the octoprussian reach of our Department of Homeland Security, this is precisely what is happening. Campus police forces have matured into counterinsurgency machines boasting weapons and armaments that would make a Blackwater mercenary proud. These well-arms guardians of America’s homeland security are also gaining expertise in intelligence gathering as they pass information on radical campus groups to the Pentagon’s Threat and Local Observation Notice system (TALON).

They are also doubling as full-time FBI agents even as many universities are forcing protestor into isolated “free assembly areas.” Some universities are even expelling students for handing out antiwar literature which these universities have designated as “unauthorized material.”

In the meantime, comprehensive student records on 14 million students who applied for federal financial aid were sent to the Beltway under a program called, appropriately, Project Strike Back. Mind you, what was being struck back at wasn’t 9/11; it was the student riots of the sixties that shut down campuses and turned America into a cesspool of drugs and sex.

Well, you can be damn sure you Neocons have decided never, never, again. They well understood that if you spare the rod you spoil the child. So they decided that they were going to make sure college students toed the line. College is all about career, not critical thinking. And it is critical thinking that creates the dissent that can all too easily morph into violent radicalization and homegrown terrorism, with the definition of terrorism expanded to include any though that deviates from the doctrinal correctness of your Neocon ideology.

In the golden days of the fifties, college students were mindless drones who partied their way through their four years of academia and graduated with a diploma, a fiancée and a secure position with corporate America. All of this was lost in the sixties as students railed against war, segregation and poverty. It was a terrifying time in our history.

Now students are being brought under control thanks to the coercive power vested in the Department of Homeland Security. The little turds are starting to learn that college Is where you go to learn proper behavior and decorum, and if you are unwilling to get with the program, they will kick your ass out and you will be reduced to brewing lattes at the local Starbucks.

It is so nice to see good behavior returning to America. That, George, will be your legacy, that you tamed America’s colleges and universities.

About Me

Case Wagenvoord's articles have been posted at "The Smirking Chimp", "Countercurrents" and "Dissident Voice". When he's not writing or brooding, he is carving hardwood bowls that have been displayed in galleries and shows across the country. He lives in New Jersey with his wife and two cats.
His book, "Open Letters to George W. Bush" is available at Amazon.com.